In her campaign narrative, multimillionaire U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon has often invoked the hardship of losing her home and filing for bankruptcy more than 35 years ago.

But details have been scarce, and records of the bankruptcy itself are hard to come by.

Public documents in the municipal vault in West Hartford provide a glimpse into the McMahons' finances before and after the bankruptcy: the home foreclosure, mortgages from a Waterbury bank, and a loan from a man charged years earlier with loan-sharking.

Also, in response to requests from The Courant, McMahon last week provided new details about the tumultuous years when she and her husband were laying the groundwork for the wrestling and entertainment empire that would become WWE.

McMahon, a Republican, won her party's endorsement Friday night for the seat now held by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, though she faces a primary challenge from former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays.

RUNNING INTO TROUBLE

On the campaign trail, McMahon speaks of her humble roots in a small town in North Carolina.

"When I was born, my family lived in low-income housing until my dad built the little house that I grew up in," McMahon says in her first TV ad of the 2012 election cycle, as a black-and-white photo of a little girl in black Mary Janes sitting on the front stoop flashes on the screen. "We didn't have a lot of expensive things but, boy, we had a lot of love."

She met Vince McMahon in church and the two married just before she started college. After graduating, the couple moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where Vince did a variety of jobs and Linda worked for a law firm. In 1974, they relocated to West Hartford.

McMahon declined a request for an interview but, through her campaign, provided a detailed account of that chaotic chapter of her life.

She remembers the Orchard Road home as being the couple's dream house: an 11-room, Tudor-style house on 4 acres. They took out a $120,000 mortgage from Connecticut Bank and Trust to buy it, and the owner agreed to take back a second mortgage worth $20,000 to help with the down payment, documents show.

But the house needed work, including new wiring and a new heating system. The McMahons had hoped to renovate but never got the chance. A series of bad business ventures, among them a money-losing deal to simulcast motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel's jump over the Snake River in Idaho in 1974, put them in a financial hole.

On Jan. 8, 1976, Connecticut Bank and Trust filed for foreclosure against the McMahons for defaulting on the mortgage, according to municipal records in West Hartford.

Three months later, in April 1976, the couple filed for bankruptcy. The filing is referenced on a card at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford, as is the discharge of the bankruptcy months later, but the paperwork itself is not there.

"The complete bankruptcy records from more than three and a half decades ago simply do not exist,'' McMahon's campaign manager, Corry Bliss, said in an email.

At the time of the filing, the McMahons already had a young son, Shane, and Linda McMahon recalls that at a creditors court hearing on the bankruptcy in July 1976 she was seven months' pregnant with their daughter, Stephanie.

In October 1976, the Orchard Road property sold at auction for $147,500. By then, the McMahons were living in a rental home in West Hartford. Vince McMahon was traveling frequently, working seven days a week to build the live-event wrestling business; Linda McMahon helped from home.

The bankruptcy was discharged in February 1977 and, with most of their debts cleared, the McMahons began rebuilding. Federal taxes are not wiped away during bankruptcy, and the McMahons spent years repaying the IRS.

On March 15, 1977, the couple received a $90,000 construction mortgage from a Waterbury bank and paid $22,500 for a parcel of land on Stoner Drive in West Hartford, on the grounds of a former estate atop a hill on the town's western flank On June 30, 1978, the same institution, Mattatuck Bank and Trust, gave the McMahons a mortgage for $120,000, and a few weeks later the couple were released from their $90,000 loan, documents show.

"Even though it is counter-intuitive, post-bankruptcy is actually a relatively easy time to obtain credit because you have no other debts and you are a lower credit risk because you cannot file for bankruptcy again for a period of time," said Bliss, McMahon's campaign manager.

LOAN AT 18% INTEREST

On July 14, 1978, the McMahons received a $20,000 loan -- at nearly twice the interest rate that their bank had charged -- from Victor Colaci of Waterbury, who worked in real estate in the area for years and, about a decade earlier, had been charged with loan-sharking.

According to documents at West Hartford's town hall, the McMahons agreed to repay Colaci at an interest rate of 18 percent -- nearly double the 9.5 percent they were paying on the $120,000, 25-year mortgage underwritten by Mattatuck bank.